Troim Katz Handler 11March2013 Yiddish Book Center

CHASKE BLACKER (BLACHER)

1905 - 1944
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During her thirty-nine years of life, Chaske Blacker worked in radio, tobacco and dress factories,
reared two children, supported a poet-husband—and managed to write two novellas and a dozen

short stories, including the prize-winning "Marta."

Institution: Troim Katz Handler

by Troim Katz Handler

Although she worked in radio, tobacco and dress factories, reared two children and supported a poet-husband, Chaske
Blacker managed to produce two novellas and a dozen short stories, even winning a prize for her story “Marta” from

the Morning Frayhayt in 1933—all during her brief life.

Born during a pogrom in 1905 in Uvarevitsh (Uvarovichi in Belarus, 26 km NW of Homel), Russia, where the Jews were
mostly Lubavitch (Habad) hasidim (as were her parents), she moved to Passaic, New Jersey, in 1923 with her mother,
Shtsheshye (née Ugolnikov, 1878-1951) and twin sisters, Evelyn (1912-1992) and Shirley, to rejoin Moyshe Blacker
(1879-1955), a kosherbutcher who had already arrived in 1914. Within a few years, she married Yiddish-English poet
Menke Katz (1906-1991) and bore two children, Troim (b. 1927) and Noah (1928-1969). Her daughter, Troim Katz
Handler, is a Yiddish poet; Noah died at 41. In the U.S., Blacker became a left-wing sympathizer who wrote in Yiddish

for Frayhayt and Der Hamer. Most of her work was produced during her first marriage, which ended in 1938. In 1941 she

married Joseph Friedman (1899-1947), who was not interested in her writings. She became ill soon after the marriage.

Her longest work, Katzovim (Butchers), serialized in Frayhayt (August 15-September 12, 1936), dealt with the lives of
kosher butchers in a small New Jersey town. Her novella, Farbitene (Exchanged, 1938), concerned two infants, one black,
one white, exchanged in a hospital nursery. “In a Radio Fabrik” (published in Der Hamer, October 1933), is a proletarian
story. “Marta” is about a girl who looks after her younger siblings but fails to notice when her parents’ pay envelope
contains only change. Blaming herself for the loss of the bills, she commits suicide. Submitted under the pseudonym
Ugolnikov in a Frayhayt writing contest (September 1933), “Marta” won readers’ votes for second prize. “A Mayse Funem

Dnieper” (A Story of the Dnieper) originally appeared in the Frayhayt and was republished in Di Pen (Oxford) in 1995.
After a long illness, Blacker died of bone cancer on April 22, 1944, in her home in Passaic, New Jersey.
OTHER WORKS BY CHASKE BLACKER

“A Lebediker Shtul” (A Living Chair). Der Hamer, September 1939; “Mundirn in Shop” (Uniforms in the
Shop).Frayhayt, May 1941; “Memorial Day.” Frayhayt, May 1941; “Kinder Shpiln Zikh” (Children Play), Frayhayt, April

1942.

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http://iwa.org/encyclopedia/article/blacker-blacher-chaske